


Sour Wolf

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: !!!, Gen, Werewolves, also very very slight mentions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-19
Updated: 2013-11-19
Packaged: 2018-01-02 02:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1051578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Rose is looking for answers about her condition</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sour Wolf

It must have happened when you tried to fight your session’s Jack Noir. You were too angry to think straight and apparently you were pretty useless in general, so you suppose it makes sense that your memories of that period are mostly a blur of fear and shadows and tentacles and void. Nothing happened before the fight that could have caused this change in you, and nothing happened after. You’re pretty sure your current condition is a direct result of your duel with the omnipotent monster that plagued your session – in fact, you’re positive he transformed you when he bit your leg. (That bite killed you, but you think the change stuck after John revived you.) This knowledge doesn’t make your situation any less frustrating, though.

Kanaya sits with you in your makeshift library as you both flip through heavy tomes looking for a ghost of a clue to help you. (Karkat, as usual, is babysitting Gamzee. Dave and Terezi, as usual, are fucking around possibly literally in Can Town.) So far you’ve both found precisely nothing useful to add to the notes you’ve already taken from your experience. It’s starting to look like you will have to rely on stories and superstitions passed down over generations and bastardized in hundreds of ways, just as Kanaya has.

You learned a long time ago that you can’t take nomenclature for granted. That’s made your search much harder than you thought it would. You can’t just flick through pages until you see the word ‘werewolf’ and Kanaya can’t just scan indexes for the troll equivalent. Not even searching for ‘lycanthropy’ is guaranteed to yield the results you want. You have to look for the actual symptoms of your condition. Heightened senses, accelerated healing, bloodlust, and cravings for raw meat are some of the obvious ones.

Those don’t bother you so much. The transformations, however, do. They seem to be pretty random. You’ve been traveling on a meteor for a year and six months now, and as far as you can tell your transformations don’t correlate with any moon cycle that might exist if you had a moon. There must be some other trigger, you think. Dave suggested anger as a possibility, and you’ve found nothing to either support or refute that assertion. Besides that you don’t have anything to go on.

Out of frustration, you snap your book closed and shove it aside. Your head falls in your hands and you rub your temples. This is just stressing you the fuck out. You’ve already reached the halfway point of your traveling and you still don’t know much of anything. You were hoping that, instead of randomly transforming into a monster and going on murderous rampages, you could learn to harness this power and use it at your will. But how can you, when you don’t even know if your suspicions about Jack Noir making you this way are correct? You wonder, not for the first time, if you aren’t the only one this happened to. You wonder if John and Jade, wherever they may be, are in the same boat as you and know more about it. The idea makes you want to cry – partly because you miss them so much it hurts and partly because this huge unknown variable has been weighing you down and you could really use their help.

Unsurprisingly, Kanaya notices your frustration and sets aside her own book. Also unsurprisingly, she pulls her chair closer to you and lays a comforting hand on your upper back. It doesn’t really help at all but you appreciate her all the same. It’s generous of her to help you as she has been. Especially when you consider that you’re almost constantly dangerous, you’re thankful to have her with you. Of course, not everyone on the meteor avoids you all the time, but Kanaya’s different. She always has been.

You turn your head enough to meet her concerned gaze. You’re not sure if it’s concern for you or concern that you might transform soon. You suppose it could be both. To ease her mind a bit (or maybe to ease your own), you try to carry out the maneuver commonly known as “the smile”. It drops after a few moments. “I’m starting to think I’ll never get answers,” you manage to say.

Kanaya pulls a face that might have been a smirk had it reached her eyes. “Possibly not out of these books,” she agrees. “You might have to play it by ear.” Her expression turns apologetic, like it’s somehow her fault that you turn into a big wolf at seemingly random times and nobody can figure out why.

You want to point out how much that absolutely has not worked so far, but you can’t bring yourself to completely murder her attempts to be positive. A deep sigh leaves you before you can stop it. Otherwise you don’t betray your thoughts. Reluctantly, you nod. “That may be my only option at this point.”

Your companion moves her hand to your shoulder and sort of squeezes; an almost half-hug. You straighten up only to lean into her, resting your head on her shoulder. Maybe the physical affection is starting to work after all. Even if you are a little nervous that you might transform and accidentally hurt her, moments like this are…nice. Really nice.

After a moment, she kisses your forehead. It’s so light you almost don’t feel it at all. You lift your head again to meet her eyes before the moment can disappear, because it always disappears too soon. (Both of you are at fault for that. She’s too shy, and you’re too nervous.) At times like this, sometimes Kanaya will kiss you and sometimes she won’t. This time, she does.

It’s not much more than a peck, at first. She’s still too concerned about you to concentrate on kissing, and maybe that’s fine because your lips are dry. You lick them and that makes her kiss you again. This time she starts with a peck but doesn’t completely pull away. She stops puckering, doesn’t move at all, just keeps her lips touching yours. She’s waiting for you to respond, to let her know that this is okay. So you do.

For a while it’s just kissing, and it’s nice. It’s still rare enough that this is a novelty to you. You’ve never kissed her so slowly, and you’ve never kissed her so deeply either. But you’ve never done more than this either. That’s understandable. Both of you are still quite young and you’re not quite sure what your relationship with her is. Just…she’s so warm, and if she’ll ever be willing to give you more you’ll take it the first chance you get. One of your arms ends up around her waist, pulling her closer and accidentally hiking her shirt up a bit. Your fingers brush her skin.

That’s when you start to feel it coming on again.

You pull away out of alarm, so fast that you fall onto the floor. For a moment Kanaya looks hurt and confused. She understands as soon as you meet her gaze. They’ve all told you that your eyes are the first to start changing, turning from lilac to golden. Your hands are the second, though they’re the first you see. As Kanaya scurries away from you, you watch as your carefully manicured nails grow into claws, protruding from paws rather than fingers.

Sometimes you can remember past this point. Other times, like now, the transformation takes over your mind early. All you can ever do is will yourself not to hurt anyone. Not to hurt Kanaya. It’s been ages since you’ve hurt anyone, but you don’t know if your will is working of if everyone has just become good at dodging you or if it’s just sheer luck. Everything fades to black and red and all you feel is anger and all you see is targets and all you want is blood and guts and death and destruction. But you can’t, you don’t want to, you can’t hurt your friends and you can’t hurt Kanaya. Save it for someone who deserves it. Save it for Jack Noir. Save it for Lord English. Don’t hurt anyone don’t hurt anyone please don’t hurt anyone.

When you come to your senses, you’re still in the library. The table and chairs are knocked over, and books are all over the place. Dave is standing over you, casually holding a bloody half-sword. (He’s always the one to subdue you. It only takes a quick wound. Dave isn’t the only one who could do that, but he is the only one who isn’t afraid to.) He tucks it back in his strife deck when you look at him and he sees that your eyes are purple again.

You sit up, check your body for the cut and find a gash on your arm that’s already starting to heal. “Thanks,” you mutter as you watch it. It’s kind of fascinating in a morbid sort of way. Though you always thank him, he never says ‘You’re welcome.’ So you sit in silence for a moment, watching the injury disappear until you think of something to say. You remember that you were trying to find answers. Maybe now would be a prime time to brainstorm. “I wasn’t angry at all, that time. Your theory doesn’t hold.”

“Yeah? So what were you guys doing?” He looks between you and Kanaya, and only then do you realize she’s been standing in the doorway watching. You look at her too and find her blushing. It’s a dead giveaway, of course, but Dave is going to make you say it anyway.

You decide to bite the bullet. With an apologetic glance at Kanaya, you tell Dave, “We were making out.”

There’s a beat of silence, then another beat, then Dave lets out a snort of laughter. He manages to stifle the rest, but for him that’s pretty much laughing so hard he pisses himself. You give him your least amused glare as he kneels down to your level. “Okay, I guess we’ve got a new theory now. Maybe your trigger is arousal. Hey, the last time this happened was when you were listening to my ill jams. Rose, do my ill jams turn you on?”

He waggles his eyebrows, but otherwise keeps a perfectly straight face. Your glare is set in stone by this point. “Dear brother, your ill jams are the least arousing thing I’ve ever encountered, I assure you. Even the underlings on your planet were more exciting than your music.”

“Yeah, bullshit, if there’s a way to figure out how to fuck a song then you will figure it out. I can read you, Rose; I know exactly what’s going on in your head.” Dave drops down to a sitting position as you roll your eyes. You look back at Kanaya, who seems to be deep in thought.

“In all seriousness,” you say turning to Dave again, “I would like to figure out what the cause of these transformations actually is. I’ve found precisely jack shit in my research.” You hope your annoyance is getting across, even through the slightly joking tone.

Dave nods once, slowly, already starting to think. “Yeah I still think there’s something to my anger theory. Maybe it’s just that anger isn’t the only thing. Like, there could be several things, or maybe just your heart rate or something. That shit can go up and down for lots of random reasons.” You nod as well. It sounds like a solid theory. “And I didn’t even just make that up, I heard it somewhere. Like, fucking Teen Wolf or something. Anyway, the only way we can tell for sure is experimenting with it.”

“Well, I don’t have any better ideas.” You sigh and get up to your feet, and then decide to ignore the fact that Dave has apparently seen Teen Wolf. Addressing both Dave and Kanaya now, you declare “Shit. Let’s be scientists.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you're curious, Dave's last heart rate theory hit the nail on the head. And yes, I got that (as well as the title) from Teen Wolf. I didn't follow all the Teen Wolf rules though.


End file.
